Description
Educational technology is a key interdisciplinary area. The main aim of educational technology is the support of teachers and students with computer tools in order to complete their tasks faster, more accurately and more efficiently. Various tools and techniques for supporting teaching and learning have been proposed and implemented over the years and especially with the advancement of Web technologies. The development of applications and tools for e-learning is complicated due to the heterogeneity of the user aims and the development approaches and the dynamic behaviour of users which the tools needs to accommodate. As the e-learning industry continues to expand every day, and the methods and tools necessary to create and maintain content and infrastructure applications become more complicated, there is an inherent need for these applications to interoperate and exchange data in order to better support the needs of learners and educators.
The Advanced Distributed Learning initiative (ADL – www.adlnet.gov) defines a set of abilities for e-learning tools and technologies. These abilities are reusability, accessibility, interoperability, adaptability, durability, and affordability. The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers – http:// www.ieee.org) defines interoperability as the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged. In e-learning the ability of tools to interoperate is of crucial importance as it will allow systems of diverse educational aims to work together, re-using the learning data and the accumulated knowledge about learners. This will eventually reduce the maintenance costs and the efforts of the educational content providers and will allow the development of more complete and adaptable interactive learning environments.
To increase the ability of educational hypermedia applications to re-use the learning data, several organizations are working to develop learning standards. CETIS (Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards – http://www.cetis.ac.uk) states that standard ways of describing educational materials are needed so that they can be easily searched for and located (http://www.cetis.ac.uk/static/ standards.html). Learning standards refer to the standardization of XML structures which are used to describe various aspects of the learning procedure.